


indigo and joy

by hazel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-22
Updated: 2005-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 12:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3410813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazel/pseuds/hazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One moment they're hexing Draco in the hallways and the next he's attending DA meetings and saying they'll never defeat You-Know-Who if they don't have a plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	indigo and joy

**Author's Note:**

> written sometime in 2005 for the prompt "the beatles, indigo, joy" and rediscovered in february 2015 when going through the "my documents" folder on an ancient HD. not beta'd.
> 
> spoilers for the major character death in the end notes

I

Following the disaster of his Fifth Year, Fiona Finnigan sent her son to her sister's house in Wiltshire. Seamus had disembarked from the train sporting a black eye and a cut lip, and had explained away the bruises by muttering something about fighting some bloody snakes. Fiona had herself been a Ravenclaw in days gone by and so knew exactly what he was talking about - that was what disturbed her. Frightened by the events whispered about at her Exploding Snap evenings, she decided that the best place for her youngest son was safe in the Muggle village of Pellinghurst. 

Seamus' Aunt Maggie was a stout woman with greying hair, and his three cousins ranged in size from average to stocky. His uncle Brian was the village greengrocer, and since Pellinghurst was far too small to have a supermarket, this was a profitable choice of employment. Their house was sprawling and situated at the edge of the village, not that that was saying much, since there were only six streets. Seamus found himself sharing a bedroom with his cousin Andrew, who was football-mad and had several shirts carefully displayed on his walls. They'd been good friends when they were younger. 

On his third day in Wiltshire, he went for a walk around the village. There weren't many shops worth exploring, but the local boys invited him to join them in a friendly game of cricket in the village green, and he spent a pleasant afternoon failing to get his hands on the ball. That evening, he received a letter from Dean, who waxed lyrical about the greatness of Muggle music and told Seamus to go through his relative's collections as soon as he got the chance. 

By the time he managed to tear himself away from his uncle's vinyl collection (his mother listened to the WWN and his father favoured Beethoven), almost a week had passed. But Uncle Brian had taught him how to copy records on to cassettes and Andrew lent him his Walkman. Seamus didn't think he'd be able to take his tapes back to school - Hermione had graced him with many a speech about how magic affected magical fields - but at least now he could listen to Led Zeppelin I or Abbey Road or Definitely Maybe if he wanted to go for a walk on his own.

"We're planning on having a game today - you wanna come?" Andrew asked Seamus one morning at breakfast. With nothing else to do in Pellinghurst except his holiday readings for school, Seamus quickly agreed. 

He almost had a heart attack to discover Draco Malfoy playing for the other team. His surprise must have been obvious, because Andrew nudged him and said, "Posh-looking bastard, isn't he? Lives up in the manor on ths hill - name's -"

"Draco Malfoy!" Seamus broke in.

"Yeah," Andrew said slowly. "How'd you know?"

"We go to school together," Seamus answered. 

"No shit! Anyway, he's pretty good at cricket."

Indeed, Draco was a reasonably fast bowler, although he wasn't very good at batting. He faltered when Seamus got up to bat, but recovered quickly, and Seamus only managed to score nine runs before being bowled out. The side Draco was on won by seventeen runs when the game ended in mid-afternoon. 

Without any real intention, Seamus sidled up to Draco during the post-match afternoon tea provided by the baker's son. "Thought you hated Muggles, Malfoy," he started. 

"Shut up!" Draco hissed. "They don't know we're - we've been here for four hundred years and they don't know, and if you say anything I'll kill you."

"But why do they even know you're here?" Seamus asked, puzzled. "I mean, they can't see the Leaky Cauldron or anything in London. Besides, don't you hate Muggles?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "Because, you idiot, the Floo network is only a couple of hundred years old and proper Apparition isn't even that, so visitors used to have to come through the village to get to the house. They just think we're Muggle aristocrats. And I don't hate Muggles - they're like cattle, why would I bother?" 

"That's probably the most offensive thing I've ever said, and that's saying something, Malfoy. Plus, you're always insulting Hermione and calling her a Mudblood - how can you say you don't hate her?" 

Draco shrugged. "I never said I don't hate Mudbloods - they always think that the Muggle world is better than the Wizarding one, just because it's what they're used to. And most of the leaks to Muggles come from Mudbloods - they tell their childhood best friend that they're a witch and suddenly they're being tortured for information then tied to a stake. Don't you ever study? Every single Wizarding family in Britain - every one! - has had a family member killed for witchcraft in the past two hundred years, and it's all because of people like Granger thinking that it's okay to tell the people she knows, because _of course_ the people she knows are going to take the news well." Perhaps feeling that a speech had not been called for, Draco flushed a little and chewed his bottom lip. Seamus had never seen him this relaxed. 

That wasn't the point, though. The point was that - "Maybe if people like _your father_ didn't go around torturing Muggles for shits and giggles, they wouldn't react as badly when they found out," Seamus retorted.

White spots appeared on Draco's flushed cheeks. "Don't you dare talk about my father!" he snapped. Then he punched Seamus in the face, hard enough for Seamus to feel something crackle in his nose, and stormed off. 

II

One moment they're hexing Draco in the hallways and the next he's attending DA meetings and saying they'll never defeat You-Know-Who if they don't have a plan. Harry says that his plan is to, you know, kill Voldemort, and he says it just like that, Voldemort _Voldemort_ **Voldemort** because he's been taught that fear of a name increases one's fear of the thing. Seamus flinches anyway, and even Draco presses his lips together tighter than normal. 

Ron can't understand it. Harry obviously isn't allowed to speak about it; he wears his secrets uncomfortably, and the most he'll say is that Dumbledore thinks he'll be useful. So Ron goes around for a week ranting about stupid Malfoy and his stupid Death Eater parents and how they're all going to be betrayed and how it's stuid anyway because it's not like Malfoy knows anything useful, like how ekeltricity works. 

"Electricity, Ron," Dean sighs, the sixth night in a row they're trying in the Dormitory to get to sleep but can't because Ron is stressing about What Malfoy Wants.

"Oh, shut up!" Ron snaps. "That wasn't even my point anyway. My point is that -"

"He hangs out with Muggles every summer," Seamus interjects. "I know cause my Aunt Maggie lives in the village near his family's mansion. Knows how to play cricket and everything." He's not sure exactly why he felt compelled to defend Draco, except that he's tired of hearing Ron constantly talking, and it's not as though Draco has ever done anything obviously evil to him. To Harry, yes, but if Harry is willing to forgive and forget, Seamus figures that he should too.

The next day, Draco pulls him out of the corridor as he's walking slowly to Divination and drags him into a storage room. The walls are lined with dusty shelves occupied by old textbooks and empty jars; Draco looks as though he's swallowed a lemon, and Seamus leans against the door. "What the fuck, Malfoy?"

"Theodore Nott asked me this morning whether it's true that I play Muggle games in the summer holidays. What do you have to say about that?"

"So?" Seamus shrugs. "It's true, isn't it?"

Draco clenches his jaw. "That's my point, you cretin! The other Slytherins think I joined the DA as some sort of Dark plot that they haven't been informed about. I can't afford to have them knowing I'm in it for real."

"Oh," says Seamus. "I only told my dormitory, though, and I told them last night," he ponders.

Draco's eyes widen a little as he thinks. "That means... someone in your dormitory is talking to people they shouldn't."

"Don't be stupid. We're all members of the DA; we're all friends of Harry, why would we want to hurt him?"

"Yes," says Draco, looking straight at Seamus, "It's obviously some sort of Dark plot that we don't know about." In the filtered light from the filthy windows up high on the walls, Draco's eyes shine much darker, almost indigo. Seamus wonders when he started thinking Draco was good-looking.

III

They will never find out who the traitor was, but it won't matter in the slightest; Harry will have kept his cards closer to his chest than anybody suspected. Harry will defeat Voldemort exactly as prophecised, and afterwards everyone will be able to say his name with abandon. Within a decade, there will be a skipping rope rhyme played by the First and Second Years in the courtyard that features the legendary defeat of the latest Dark Lord by Harry Potter. 

Seamus and Draco will be good friends, often seen dining together in one of the many fine establishments around Boleyn Alley. Draco's name will be connected in turn with Pansy Parkinson, Emily Perkins, and Hannah Abbott in the society columns of the witches' rags; Seamus' name will never be featured, although he will get the title of "a friend" in a few of the photographs taken of him and Draco wandering about town. 

Draco will admit to wanting Seamus on an unexpectedly sunny day in late March, two years after they finish Hogwarts. They will have just finished playing a friendly game of Quidditch with various old schoolfriends, and will be sitting across from one another in some dive of a pub. Seamus will choke on his beer, look up into Draco's flushed face, and say hastily, "Yeah. Um, mutual." Three months later he will permanently move to Wiltshire. 

Years will pass and they will live a life of quiet joy. Seamus will lose some of his brashness, and Draco will learn to talk about his feelings. It will take them almost five years to get all of the illegal Dark artifacts out of the Manor, and Seamus will never convince Draco to get rid of the rest of them. They will hire Neville to replant the gardens. 

Draco will die of a heart attack in his fifty-seventh year, and Seamus will not know what to do with himself. Eventually Neville, who has white hair and a full beard, will drag him off to London for a week, and they will have hesitant and subdued sex in one of the rooms at the Leaky Cauldron before Neville pushes Seamus off to an interview for the Charms position at Hogwarts, recently vacated by the retirement of Grace Whittaker. 

Seamus will enjoy teaching once he grows accustomed to it, and his romance with Neville will bloom slowly, but not a day will go by when he doesn't miss Draco.

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> draco has a fatal and unexpected heart attack aged 57.


End file.
